With Chopin’s ethereal nocturne in the background, here are some excerpts from a conversation between Ray Charles and Dick Cavett that took place in June 1972. Ray’s astonishing response when asked if he would welcome the prospect of having his sight restored (assuming such an option was available) is both incredibly sincere and extremely topical…
Regardless of whether you love or hate Quentin Tarantino (there are valid reasons for both), there’s one thing you can always count on when it comes to his films: music.
Tarantino’s use of music is an integral part of his creative process. Much of what’s best in his movies has to do at least as much with what we listen as with what we see. Take for example the “Misirlou” scene from Pulp Fiction or the lap dance scene from Death Proof.
His cooperation with celebrated composer Ennio Morricone has only helped to further enhance the powerful audiovisual effect of Tarantino’s movies. In his latest film Django Unchained one can hear a variety of music genres, however the Maestro’s touch is a crucial one. Tarantino could have hardly wished for someone better to work on the score of his American epic western, other than the man who composed the music for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West.
In case you already watched Django and were intrigued by its theme, I would like to point you to a 1971 Italian film by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi called Goodbye Uncle Tom (original title: Addio Zio Tom). If you thought Django was somewhat shocking, then brace yourselves! And, by the way, you may well be familiar with the film’s theme song (originally written by Riz Ortolani), as it was also used by Nicolas Winding in his recent film Drive.
Loan and re-contextualization of pre-existing material have been, after all, commonplaces for the creative process in all art. Tarantino’s mash-up approach of mixing a wide range of very different elements in his films is no exception: combined with his eclectic choice of music, it constitutes the quintessence of his art.
Ten minutes. The time it takes to water the plants, do the dishes or read the daily news. At least in the conventional sense of “time.” Because there exists another, parallel dimension where time can be suspended indefinitely and a single moment can signify an eternity. In this dimension, which is no other than the realm of abstract music, ten minutes of “normal” time assume a new importance and are long enough to open a portal to a radically different perception of reality and the cosmos.
Ten minutes is approximately the duration of Spiegel im Spiegel (“mirror in the mirror”), a piece by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) written in 1978 for piano and violin. If there was ever a musical synonym for absorbed meditation and contemplative stillness, this would have to be it.
Estonian composer Arvo Pärt
Spiegel im Spiegel is written in the compositional style of tintinnabuli (from the Latin tintinnabulum = bell), a technique invented by Pärt himself and influenced by his mystical experiences with religious music. Although his early works are characterized by a variety of styles ranging from neoclassicism to serialism, his preoccupation and study of choral music, Gregorian chant and the polyphonic music of the Renaissance eventually led Pärt to develop an idiomatic style characterized by simple harmonic structure and rhythmic patterns, alluding to the ringing of bells.
“Tintinnabulation”, says Pärt, “is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers – in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning. The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity.” Of this type of music, Spiegel im Spiegel is one of the earliest and finest illustrations. It is also one of his most popular works and has been repeatedly used in films, as in Jean-Luc Godard’s In Praise of Love (2001) and Guy Ritchie’s Swept Away (2002).
That a work by Pärt such as Spiegel im Spiegel has been so well-received is a bit of a contradiction. One can hardly think of more introspective, detached and unfashionable music than this. And yet it contains a certain quality that defies time and space, speaking directly to one’s heart and inner self. As Steve Reich, one of the founding fathers of minimalism, once put it: “[Pärt’s] music fulfills a deep human need that has nothing to do with fashion.”
It is not just the ten sublime minutes of Spiegel im Spiegel. Much of Pärt’s music is of profound expressivity and unfathomable beauty (his Tabula Rasa is another case in point). The composer once compared his music to “white light which contains all colors”, its division being possible only through a prism, which could be “the spirit of the listener.” At its best, this music indeed offers that which only divine light could ever promise to reveal: a glimpse of the eternal.
The Muser 